


A Glooming Peace

by sentinel_of_the_starry_sky



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 17:20:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18815485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentinel_of_the_starry_sky/pseuds/sentinel_of_the_starry_sky
Summary: "A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished." - William ShakespeareA war is won and a world saved. But at what cost? The Inquisitor is abandoned by the man she loved and pieces remain out of place as kingdoms and empires seek to destroy all that she has built over the last three years. Tragedy stalks the Inquisition and death covets those left behind.Demons have been slain, but what remains?





	A Glooming Peace

“So, he really is gone?”

I am standing at the centre of his rotunda. My hands rest lightly on the polished wood of his desk. The space is littered with his sprawling, forgotten papers. They are all in his familiar hand, sweeping in its elegance. The only indication he had ever been there. Well, one of the only things.

“We have searched all night but my scouts report no sign of him, Inquisitor. No tracks leading from the battle and no sign of movement in the mountains or the valley. It is as if he simply vanished.” Leliana stands with her hands folded in front of her, as if pious in their delicacy. Her hood is lowered to reveal her shock of red hair glimmering in the dim lantern light. “I’m sorry, Lilya. I’m sorry I could not do more.” I struggle to remember a moment when the Spymaster has addressed me by name. I wonder briefly if there ever was a moment. It would be a fitting first, tonight of all nights.

The pretence has all but crumbled.

The war is over.

We stand in an uncomfortable disquiet for a time. The lilting music from the Great Hall hums through the stone to disturb our attempt at silence. It is as if Skyhold’s very foundations have awoken for the celebrations.

“Thank you Leliana. For everything. I’m sorry to have kept you from the party. You should go celebrate. No doubt Josephine will be missing you.” I manage a small smile before turning away.

“Inquisitor, truly is there nothing I can do for you? I know he meant…”

“That will be all, Sister.” The formality cuts across my lips naturally, as it always does now, but this time I taste the sting of it. The same sting that is reflected in Leliana’s dark eyes. She inclines her head briefly before slipping from the room with her usual, quiet grace. As she opens the wooden door, the music and smells of the party seep into the room in a glance of spring. The rising crescendo of drums and fiddles; the stamping feet of a hundred dancers; the sweet hint of warm, spiced and honeyed wine; the ring of laughter and relief. The sound of lives saved. It cuts out again when Leliana shuts the door behind her. I am left once more in that disquiet.

I weep then.

I sink to the cool stone, my legs shaking and giving out beneath me. Exhaustion seeps through my bones. The pain comes next, the flesh that sings with the burn of dragon fire and the fresh bite of new scars seers and screams through my limbs. The tears come hot and thick and unpleasantly. They streak down my face and tumble down my front in dark rivulets coloured with blood and dirt and ash. I feel three years of terror flow from me in heaving, wracking sobs.

_It is done._

It is strange. To know the battle is over, the war won. The Breach is closed and the creature, Corypheus, is dead.

But _he_ is gone.

“Inquisitor!” Dorian’s raucous tenor echoes from the library above, now with the stumbling rise and fall of intoxication in its cadence. “Lilya! I demand you come and drink with us this instant. It would be criminal for you all of people to be sober on a night like this, with the world at your feet… Where are you hiding, dear friend? I have two bottles of Orlesian red with your name on it.” The words are broken up by a rapid succession of hiccups.

I try to speak, to answer if only to tell him to leave, but I choke on my words as I scrub tears from my face. Instead I remain quiet, hoping to be obscured in the half-light of the lanterns or in the desk’s broad shadow.

“She’s not there, Sparkler! She’s probably sleeping or drinking or dancing or…” Varric’s grumbling quake of a voice echoes from the other side of the balcony and is accompanied by the sudden splash of liquid being tipped onto the floor and a sharp expletive. “Maker knows she could use it after all that has…” I hear his words trail off to be followed by a deep belch. The sound of guffawing laughter and their receding footsteps follows until I am left alone in that same, uncomfortable disquiet. I hear the music and the subtle flutter of dark wings from the rookery overhead. I sit there for a time waiting to make sure they’re both gone before my pulling myself shakily to my feet.

The room is as it has always been. Besides the desk, the space remains empty and unfurnished. If I listen carefully, I can almost hear an old echo of his footsteps across the flagstone, pacing incessantly as he deliberates. Only a memory now. A ghost.

But the rotunda is full in a different way. The walls are still as beautiful as ever. The paint sweeps in its familiar shining arches. Life glimmers there. In the flame of Redcliffe’s castle alight against a night sky, the glint of cobalt in Empress Celene’s gown with a knife pressed to her back, the wild gash of gold in the sky above Haven. His hands had captured the whole world across these walls, a whole life. My life. Our life.

It practically sings out from the stone. The fears, the pain, the years of torment and terror. Yet there is a glory to it now with hindsight. The glory and heat and power of battles won and demons slain. I lift my hand to trace patterns across the wall, my fingertips lightly gracing the golden inlay in the grooves of stone. One part of the wall remains unfinished. I consider it for a time. I can’t remember if it was here before we departed for the summit. When we departed only yesterday, I realise suddenly. Only hours since the world had been ending. Only minutes since I had seen his face, had heard his voice on the mountainside as he called out to me in the rising snows. To assure me. To assure me that it had all been real.

_Yet he is gone._

The new painting is simple in its brutality. The wolf standing over the dragon, a sword driven through its neck. Death memorialised. Yet the pigment is beautiful, shining even, and cool to the touch. But only half-finished.

_A hope for what was to come?_ _Or did he come back here tonight, before he vanished? Some morbid last farewell in paint rather than in person?_ I don’t think I want to know.

A loud crash emanates from the Great Hall, followed by a great and echoing roar of laughter. The band livens further, the sound of tankards clanking and goblets smashing erupting in unison, all the hope in the world only a room away. I am surprised it has lasted this long. Dawn must be approaching by now and I can only imagine how sleep must beckon.

A brave new world awaits us tomorrow, the Seeker had said upon our descent. I had barely been listening.

“So, he is truly gone then?” Tugged violently from my thoughts, I turn to find Cassandra standing beneath the doorframe, appearing as if she has read my mind.

“Yes,” I manage quietly, my hand dropping from the mural to fall by my side. I step away and return to the desk at the centre of the room.

“And no word of goodbye?”

“I imagine the sentiment would be lost on him.” My voice quavers despite my best attempt to steady it. I feel the salt of tears lingering in my eyes but blink them away hastily. I do not look Cassandra in the eye as she approaches and comes to stand beside me at the desk. There is a look in her gaze that I struggle to interpret. It is not pity. The Seeker has never pitied me.

“He appears to have left in a hurry,” she muses, her hand reaching out to sort through the scattered parchment. “I would have thought he would have taken everything? Perhaps there’s a clue amongst these papers? I imagine Leliana could shed some light on their significance.”

“We won’t find him.” Though I don’t want them to be, I know the words are true as soon as I say them aloud. “If he does not want to be found then we are unlikely to ever see him again.” The last few words almost catch in my throat.

Cassandra puts down the paper. “I imagine you are right. Though I would like to know what drove him to flee so quickly.” She steps away and gazes up at the painting before us, her eyes tracing the wolf’s silhouette with a dark curiosity. “For what is worth, Inquisitor, his decision is unworthy of you.”

My eyes dart up to meet her gaze in a flash, struck by the ferocity of her words. Cassandra is never one to mince her words. Yet dread pools lightly in my stomach, for exactly what reason I cannot say. A fear of unwanted ears pressed to doors? A fear _he_ knows?

“Cassandra, I…”

“Well, I think I will take my leave, Inquisitor, if you do not mind. I would like to retire for the evening before the Chargers manage to burn anything more important down tonight.” She moves towards the door with her words still hanging sullenly in the empty air between us. “If you have need of me, I will be in my quarters.” She reaches for the door. “And I know it is not my place to insist, Lilya, but do get some sleep if you can. It will do you some good. Better to dwell on absent…friends after. I imagine Adan would have a draught if you needed one.”

I pause. “What did the Chargers burn down?”

“A small part of the Herald’s Rest maybe unusable for the moment, much to Cabot’s displeasure.” I manage a small smile at the thought of the dwarven bartender’s rage directed at a rather sheepish Qunari. A welcome return to normality.

“Well, if there was ever a night for it…”

“Indeed, Inquisitor.”

“Thank you, Cassandra.” She inclines her head briefly before leaving as swiftly and silently as she had come.

_Unworthy of you._ The words slip across my tongue like a forgotten lament, remembered suddenly around a tavern hearth.

But other memories flood in with them.

A lullaby at an open hearth, old words bringing new tears. Revelations on snow-capped peaks and incantations by firelight. Blood washed from cut, shaking hands. Lingering glances across a tavern hall. A lonely figure on an unburnished throne. Three years of journeying and of battle and loss, cast through my mind in a single moment.

Then came different ones. Very different ones.

The gentle tug of hands tangled in my hair. The glint of dark eyes reflecting the candle light, only inches from my own. The searing heat of lips on mine. The light grace of fingertips across exposed skin, cool to the touch. His hands. His eyes. His lips. His touch.

_Solas._

I feel a tug in my belly, the dread dissipating into a familiar, curling warmth. Even after the weeks away from him, the weeks since that moment in the glade, it still exudes that same pleasance. Like honey on my tongue or sugar on my lips - a saccharine sweetness tracing the length of my limbs and tingling up my spine. If for a moment, I feel his hands there instead. A glance of heat where there is now only the cool cloth of shirt.

“It was all real.” His words are a whisper in the half-light, a memory in the wind, emanating out like a songbird’s call, delicate and desperate. But they taste bitter in my mouth now. Like some old, forgotten tragedy come back to linger on the lips of the living.

And a tragedy it was.

Blood on the leaves under a darkening canopy. A temple in ruins and veiled in pain. Slipping beneath the shining pool’s surface into a watery darkness. Misted voices reverberating through my mind and caught in shadow. An ancient terror caught there in the temple’s light. An ancient sorrow.

_You are not_ my _people._

The tears come again now, stinging and biting as they catch in my lashes. Fear grips me as I stand along in the hollow space. I feel myself retreating from the room, my legs carrying me like a sleepwalker from the rotunda more swiftly than I think myself capable of. I start up the stairs to the library and come out onto the landing to find the place dark and empty. The smell of old parchment and leather binding fills my mouth mixed with the hint of Varric’s spilt liquor. I retreat further still, up and until I have reached the rookery, met only by the squawking of ravens and the flutter of dark wings.

I cannot bring myself to cross the Great Hall to reach my room. I don’t want to be faced with their jubilance, with the faces of those I love as they celebrate their victory. Hands clasping shoulders, mouth dripping with wine and smiles I cannot return. They would know. They might already

The rookery is dark and uninviting. It feels strange standing alone here. It’s almost like I’m invading Leliana’s sacred space. Even the candles at her small altar have diminished. But tonight, there is nowhere else to go. No warm bed, no arms to fall into, no sanctuary. Skyhold is my home yet in this moment it is not. It belongs to the others tonight. It belongs to him.

I find a small alcove between two empty cots stacked with blankets. I sink down in the lasting shadow, tucking my knees up to my chin. Sleep is an effort, as always, but is does come. If only for a time. In the light of a rapidly encroaching and unwelcome dawn.


End file.
